Saturday, December 3, 2011
eMgram: From the Edge of the Road
A meditation on motion, perspective, and the illusion of stasis.
concrete splits the countryside
across glacial moraine
divides declivity from acclivity
exposes old sandstone strata
each curve seems smooth
a genteel gray gravity
a cautious centrifugal pull
seen from space
the road describes
the jagged fractal pattern
of a serriform leaf
genus aceraceae
blades of sawtooth grass
sprout from sand and soil
alluvial sediment from a riverbed
twelve thousand years old
roots reclaim the calcite clay
and gravel of the road at a pace
that only seems like stasis
forty yards from the edge of oil
the femur of a brown marmot
fossilizes to limestone nodules
an imagined camera
placed in that relative reality
would capture my passing
as a blurred blue retinal afterimage
the dilated fixed pupil
the cancerous cornea
sends spores to the wind
again and again
on the event horizon that extends
from the edge of the road
carbon atoms conspire
in the novae of neurons
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"an imagined camera
ReplyDeleteplaced in that relative reality
would capture my passing
as a blurred blue retinal afterimage"
I'm wondering if the poet is borrowing an image from physics particle theories.
"The Higgs will only last for a small fraction of a second, and then decay into other particles. So in order to tell whether the Higgs appeared in the collision, researchers look for evidence of what it would have decayed into."
http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/higgs.html
The poem starts with a detailed description employing scientific terminology of the geology of a place. 7 verses before a very tentative "I" makes a very brief appearance, only to disappear almost immediately into the elemental landscape. It is not even an active "I", not an agent "I", in charge of its own velocity and direction. Relative to the eternal motionlessness of the camera, an instrument that registers without comment, the "I" is just like this new particle that "only last for a small fraction of a second, and then decay into other particles." And then gone.
Yet there is something in this poem that defies the passivity, the absence of living human memory implied in the camera. I counted three vantage points: One is "seen from space", a big picture. Another is "from the edge", where the small fossil of a marmot's remains is observed (by whom?). The next is the camera's, "placed in that relative reality". Nowhere is the implied "I" given a vantage point yet without it, none of this would matter one iota.
What I as the reader see is that concealed "I" swishing through a certain scene, trying to freeze a memory of a fracture of a second on the continuum of a movement from somewhere to somewhere. I am nothing but that particle, it seems to suggest in this poem, already gone before you even realized I was here. Yet but for that --almost aggressively-- self-effacing "I" we would have no knowledge of the scene, of the camera, of the marmot, of the 12000 year old rocks, of the road. None whatsoever.
To be seduced by the despair of this disappeared "I" is to take Kafka literally at his own word when he says: "I can swim like the others only I have better memory than the others, I have not forgotten my former inability to swim. But since I have not forgotten it my ability to swim is of no avail and I cannot swim after all" Anne Carson admonishes her reader in "Plainwater" that "That is like summing up Kafka as a poor swimmer". She goes on: "...the poet's task, Kafka says, is to lead the isolated human being into the infinite life, the contingent into the lawful. What streams out of Mimnermos's suns are the laws that attach us to luminous things. Of which the first is time". (p.12)
And let us not forget the ultimate irony, that thousands of scientists have erected huge and complicated machines and have exerted untold efforts to discover particles that exist for only a fraction of a second, that can only be known by the traces they leave.
Let me lay some groundwork for the uninitiated. It is always a dicey proposition for a poet to comment on his own work, lest the focus shift from the work before us to what may have been in the poet's mind at the point of creation. If we go down that road, we confuse intent with the proper object of our regard. The work must stand on its own. So: I doff my poetic hat and put on that of a reader.
ReplyDeleteThis will also not be about a "correct" or "incorrect" interpretation. If we are circumspect in our exegesis, each becomes part of a unified whole, a confluence of meaning.
Let me be as systematic as possible, taking each stanza in turn.
concrete splits the countryside
across glacial moraine
divides declivity from acclivity
exposes old sandstone strata
The language here is, as you noted, technical. Assigning a name to something is an attempt at a definition, a pinning down of meaning, a narrowing in the pursuit of clarity. This is especially true of scientific language, which tries to be as unambiguous as possible. While it's necessary to have common ground, terms we can generally agree on, we cannot be seduced into assuming that our definitions represent an absolute, a static label of "what the thing is." Language is inherently fluid and ambiguous. I am particularly drawn to the word "concrete." It is active--it splits, divides, and exposes. We think of it as "real," hard, functional, rational. It is none of these, as we shall see. The stanza following expands on the character of the road: cautious, conservative, staid, stable.
On to the third, and a change of perspective:
seen from space
the road describes
the jagged fractal pattern
of a serriform leaf
genus aceraceae
An expanded view of the road, which now appears quite unlike our first view. It is jagged and organic, like a serriform leaf. But still, we must attempt a static definition, another scientific one. We collapse it into its genus.
blades of sawtooth grass
sprout from sand and soil
alluvial sediment from a riverbed
twelve thousand years old
A writer I love named William Least-Heat Moon describes something called a "deep map." This a cartography that goes beyond the printed lines and allows us to travel into the landscape rather than simply observing it. It is important to recognize that the road was once a riverbed, and before that a glacier. This place was here before, organic, without our "concrete" definitions. (continued)
roots reclaim the calcite clay
ReplyDeleteand gravel of the road at a pace
that only seems like stasis
The road, which seems stable and unchanging, is constantly in motion. The change in perspective here is one of time--we cannot see the changes because the pace is so slow. But time and motion are plastic, relative.
forty yards from the edge of oil
the femur of a brown marmot
fossilizes to limestone nodules
an imagined camera
placed in that relative reality
would capture my passing
as a blurred blue retinal afterimage
Another change in perspective. We enter "marmot time" which moves at the pace of fossilization. If we set up our camera from that perspective, our intrusion into the landscape appears as only a blur. A moment in time, no matter how we slow it down, can never be fixed: not with a stopwatch, or a camera, or a Large Hadron Collider in search of the so-called "god particle" the Higgs boson. I'm very happy you brought that in. I had not considered it before, but it fits nicely. Light is either a particle or a wave, depending on how we observe it. It is at both at once, but we cannot fix it in place. We can only observe its nature indirectly, as with the Higgs. Matter is inherently unstable, in a state of constant flux. You have noted that perfectly in your concluding paragraph.
the dilated fixed pupil
the cancerous cornea
sends spores to the wind
again and again
Like the marmot, our own mortality would seem to be an ultimate stasis. But even in this image of death and decay, motion is propagated, flux continues.
on the event horizon that extends
from the edge of the road
carbon atoms conspire
in the novae of neurons
As we look outward from the edge of our supposedly concrete reality, (or our literalist definitions) we can begin to see farther, a suggestion of the ineffable--the carbon atoms that form the basis of all living things and ultimately generate our consciousness are constantly morphing, whether in our neurons or at their point of genesis in exploding stars.
I have an addendum on your search for the elusive "I," but I need a break.
Addendum: the elusive "I."
ReplyDeleteFrom a poetic perspective, I think it is usually unwise to include personal nouns, but this is a purist's view, hard to achieve in practice. My roots are in Imagism, most famously demonstrated by WC Williams' iconic poem:
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the
white
chickens.
The primacy of image. The "I" is nearly invisible.
The danger in seeking the "I" involves a couple of things. One, it tends to direct attention again to the poet and not to the poem. Two, it may lend to a conflation of "I" with POV, which may be entirely different. For example, there is just the one elusive personal pronoun in our present example. The POV from which we observe the content of the poem expands outward and takes a multiplicity of views.
If I were to edit this poem (yes, I have and will) I would replace "my" with "our." Reason being, the understanding of the work exists not in one separate mind or persona, but in a conversation that occurs between poem and reader. We, us, our, not I Me Mine.
You may think you can interpret your own poem as a reader but it doesn't really work that way. You are too familiar with the motivation and stimulation that urged this poem to be able to provide a reader's interpretation. What you have done is explain, in great detail, your own thoughts before they were translated into poetic form. Here is the glaring difference between your exegesis and mine: I read very quickly over the first seven verses to get to the moment when the "I" appears. Once I got to that "I", and more or less figured out its location in relation to the poem's scheme of things, only then did I go back to re-read the first seven to try to relate them to that ghost of a representative of a sentient intelligence. I'm not sure I can fully explain our respective perspectives. It's as if we are looking at the poem from its opposite ends. You insist on walking the reader through the verses as you ordered them, like a tour guide pointing to the geological formations. I read backwards. As a reader I want to connect with the human heart to be found only in the vanishing "I". I repeat what I said: Without the "I", nothing matters.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember a similar point I once made about the poet's absence, or reluctance to be, in your poems. Your interpretation mirrors that shyness (for lack of a better term).
The best example I can think of is haiku, a painting with words that evokes a personal experience in the reader without mentioning a personality. Hah, very zen. But then, I am no zen master, and the inclusion of personae may sometimes work, too.
ReplyDeleteI know that it really doesn't work that way, that I can't be just an independent observer. But I can try. Like I said, it's a dicey proposition. I take your point about the difference in our exegeses, but then, no two will be alike anyway--which is all to the good.
ReplyDeleteI get your point about the poem being an image in words and the reader having to do all the legwork on his own, coming all the way to poem rather than meet it somewhere in the distance between poet and reader.
ReplyDeleteThis is a famous example of such pure imagism:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
But there is something very lonely about such poems. A camera with a computer's memory.
I guess that means we have very different expectations from poetry. Maybe even hostile to each other.
"The danger in seeking the "I" involves a couple of things. One, it tends to direct attention again to the poet and not to the poem."
ReplyDeleteI think this underestimates the reader's intelligence and sensibility. You don't trust us to read the poem "correctly" so you remove everything that you think might interfere with the pure experience. Like baby-proofing a house to prevent any possible injury to the baby who doesn't know yet what sharp edges and power outlets are. What you do in fact is direct your reader into the narrow path of the image or thought you want to express by excluding anything that YOU believe might distract them from arriving at that ultimate image. How frustrating, then, that I should be such a recalcitrant reader, that I see in your poem things you didn't intend me to see, that I am drawn to the "wrong" end of the poem, that I care more about the "I" than the concrete! But don't you see how you contradict your own belief, that "The work must stand on its own"? It's as if a poet must police himself, always guarding against any hint of the personal as though it were some sort of a poetic crime to be in the poem.
No, no. Not about right or wrong. My exegesis is just one, and yours another. I certainly don't insist that everyone arrive where and in the manner I intended. That intention may in fact exist, but the larger destination of the poem involves just the sort of divergences you describe. Of course you see more than I intend. That is the whole point of my discounting intention. Understanding occurs, if it does at all, in the dialog--not between poet and reader, since that rarely exists, but in a communication between the poet and the poem, and after, between poem and reader. The poem is the bridge, and our differing interpretations only exemplify our different experience and associations. The poem collects all of this, and its meaning expands with each new participant. I draw this from Eliot, in "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
ReplyDeleteBizarre sidebar, or, the sidebar of the bizarre:
ReplyDeleteAm currently experiencing the "monolith theme" I mentioned in a recent conversation. It's right there, unbidden, on the TV screen.
Another citation I have a great deal of respect for is that of CS Lewis, a thinker I have great disaffection for as a philosopher and theologian, but whose instincts I nevertheless admire when it comes to literature. He describes a "great dance," in which participation is simultaneously intrinsically necessary and individually negligible. My formulation of the poem as intermediary, acknowledging a whole while negating the primacy of any one individual, is one exemplar of this.
ReplyDeleteIt is fine for poems to be that much detached, eM, but I don' think I can go along with such a principle as being cast in stone. Anne Carson's poetry is intensely personal yet it opens up an entire new way of looking and thinking and feeling.
ReplyDeleteI feel your poems are generally infused with deep and unbearable emotional despair. But if I'm requited to indicate what causes this affect, I find I cannot point to this or that element and locate that center of gravity. I cannot explain what in the bare bones of the poem makes me feel this way but I am also not ready to dismiss it as a trick of my own imagination.
Maybe it's the poet's insistence on disappearing from the poem that imparts this emotion. It's the very absence, the silence, that I notice most. This need to vanish in order to let the poem be.
Very little is set in stone, and my voice differs from Carson's of course. Vive la difference! My own judgement when finding that voice followed a chain of reasoning that extends from Eliot to my good friends Wimsatt & Beardsley. The emotional tone you describe appears as more a background, an environment. This tone has a certain fatalism about it, although not always. I do have pieces which have lighter notes, brighter shades (is that oxymoronic? Hah!) I really like your last 'graph, which is spot-on.
ReplyDeleteI think it is also important to note that poets who appear within their works do so necessarily as personae, and conflating such with real persons is dicey at best.
ReplyDeleteYes, wasn't that TS Eliot's alibi when he was trying to reject the criticism that his poetry contained profound antisemitic sentiment?
ReplyDeleteAs I said before, you seem to suspect your reader of not being able to perform the reading experiment without your help. Fie! We can read good, eM, we can distinguish between the speaking "I" and the writing "I".
I had a feeling you would see it that way. I wasn't referring to you as reader, or more astute readers in general--only common misconceptions in a wider audience. Excuse the pedantry, it's a holdover from teaching nineteen year-olds with no relevant background or history.
ReplyDeleteBut you can't write poetry fearing the obtuseness of nineteen year olds! And I didn't take your comment as a personal affront. Give me some credit!
ReplyDeleteOK. Point taken.
ReplyDeleteI confess it is slightly uncomfortable to converse with the poet about his poem while referring to the poet as "the poet" and not "you". This is an indication that perhaps we cannot reach a mutually-shared understanding. After all, how can I tell the creator that his creation means something else for me? How can he accept it, on a fundamental level? Am I not "colonizing" the poem by claiming a different reading? And this leads me to the next natural question: Is it not a truth universally acknowledged that the author is always at odds with his readers? That there is tension there from the first moment of meeting? And is this not the healthiest relationship between author and reader?
ReplyDeleteIf Bob is reading this thread I can imagine him thinking: this bloody woman can't stop being contentious even when she discusses poetry, for crying out loud!
ReplyDeleteVery uncomfortable for me, as I indicated at the beginning. I'm crossing a line here not usually crossed by any poet I have ever known personally. As one, they refuse to explain or justify their work to readers. This is an experiment.
ReplyDeleteI see your contentious nature as both boon and bane.
ReplyDelete"Boon and Bane" sounds like a suspect law firm.
ReplyDeleteFrom the introduction to "Glass, Irony and God":
ReplyDelete"Poets distinguish themselves by the way they see. A dull poet is one who sees fashionably or blindly what he thinks poets see. The original poet sees with new eyes, or with an imported vision (as with Eliot seeing like Laforgue or Pound like the Chinese). Anne Carson's eyes are original. We are not yet used to them and she may seem unpoetic, or joltingly new, like Whitman or Emily Dickinson in their day. She writes in a kind of mathematics for the emotions, with daring equations and recurring sets and subsets of images.As with Matthew aRnord, truth and observation are more important than lyric effect or colouring. If a good line happens, it happens. Anne carson's poems are like notes made in their pristine urgency, as fresh and bright as a series of sudden remarks. But they are the remarks of a speaker who remains silent until there is something to be said, something that has been processed in the heart and brooded over in the imagination and is not to be further processed in rhyme or meter" (Guy Davenport)
This is key, I think: "But they are the remarks of a speaker who remains silent until there is something to be said". It's not about a vanishing or erasure of the "I". It is the "I" silently observing until there is something to be said.
Oh, crap. I need to read this stuff. I'll have something other than a visceral reaction later. That selection is acute.
ReplyDelete